The Downtown Halifax Plan, Heritage and Design Department, Halifax Regional Municipality
HRMbyDESIGN ushers Halifax into the era of design-based community building with a vision of a dense, walkable and mixed-use downtown shaped by thousands of passionate citizens. It consists of a new municipal plan, land use bylaw, design guidelines, heritage conservation districts, design review committee, streamlined approval process, density bonusing, and public realm improvement plan. HRMbyDESIGN allows heritage to harmoniously co-exist with contemporary architecture, dramatically increases opportunities for people to live and work downtown, and protects the human scale of the city. Innovations include a single mixed-use zone over the entire downtown, the elimination of parking requirements, and mandatory green roofs.
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“HRMbyDesign represents a good common sense, professional, well analysed, well described piece of planning. The jury especially liked how the design team took the environmental and historic context into account to create the new fabric of the area. This plan will probably work; it seemed thoroughly implementable.”